I don’t know how to feel about Airtel adopting 5G with SA (Standalone) technology. They probably have to do it if they want to deliver true
gigabit speeds for FWA and genuinely unlimited, uncapped data plans for mobile users.
In my opinion, though, they should keep the NSA bands as well and not completely replace them with SA. Why not support both? NSA still runs on the existing 4G infrastructure and is already operating at its maximum potential.
Here’s my own experience as an example: Jio went fully SA, which lets them offer genuine 5G download speeds. But because they’re adding so many new towers for 5G, they seem to have reduced focus or capacity on 4G towers. As a result, while 5G is fast, it doesn’t penetrate walls very well, whereas 4G does. Strangely, their 4G performance has become quite poor since they shifted so much attention to 5G infrastructure.
On the other hand, Airtel’s 5G NSA setup can’t reach the absolute peak 5G speeds, but it still provides decent performance (and somehow penetrates walls better, possibly because it relies on the 4G backbone). At the same time, their 4G has improved dramatically. I’m consistently getting over 200 Mbps download speeds on 4G alone.
So in a way, Airtel’s NSA 5G approach has actually made their 4G network much better. This might just be specific to my area, and I could be wrong, but because of this, I’ve set my phone’s data network to 4G only. It gives me longer battery life, more reliable coverage, and honestly excellent speeds.
, Airtel (AS9498) 
, Jio (AS64049)